


it's coldest in high places

by Felinix



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: @ lu why would you make me do this, Angst, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning, Not A Happy Ending, i'm sorry i have regrets, like a lot of it, me @ me hey what if I kill off half of my ship, non-canon compliant, this is almost 2k of pure angst and grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felinix/pseuds/Felinix
Summary: Wylan dies. Jesper tries to cope. It goes about as well as expected.
Relationships: Implied Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	it's coldest in high places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pandaleah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandaleah/gifts).



> I have regrets, it's late, this is not 100% my fault. You may blame my friends.

Wylan does not die in Jesper’s arms, contrary to what every single romance novel Jesper’s ever read tells him.

(It makes sense- romance novels are made of rosy sunrises. Real life is a glorified trash heap.)

Rather, Wylan is cradled in Matthias’ arms.

Which was just as well, actually. Jesper wasn’t sure he could lift Wylan for five minutes without his legs buckling to the floor, much less carry him up a flight of stairs.

(Wylan was so small, and everything seemed so big compared to his crumpled form.)

Jesper makes a choked sound at the sight of Wylan, dappled with red streaks- _blood,_ blood striping his skin-, overlarge jacket thrown over his skinny shoulders. A fleeting memory of Wylan’s mother’s paints flicker over Jesper’s mind, the image of acrylic sunsets superposed over the crimson marring Wylan’s skin.

Nina doesn’t say anything, just flies to his side, arms out and at the ready. Jesper can see them drop to her sides, useless. He can feel the revelation at the same moment she does. _Oh._ Nina can’t help him. (Not anymore. Not like she used to be able to.)

Inej slips in behind Matthias, effortlessly silent as usual. “There was a mistake- we were sold out.”

The words fall like droplets of water. Sold out. Someone in the Dregs had turned on them, had spilled to the Dime Lions the details of their con.

(It wasn’t even that big of a con, anyway, just a few thousand kruge. Certainly not worth anything _like this_.)

Wylan’s skin pales and pales and pales into the color of rice-paper and the jacket darkens with the weight of blood by the second while each of them stare wordlessly. _He’s past saving_ , that Nina doesn’t say. Jesper knows a mortal wound- has inflicted some himself- and he knows the amount of blood soaking Wylan’s body and the flimsy excuse for a bandage was far too much to bear, from the moment Matthias barged into Jesper’s room.

The four of them keep silent vigil as Wylan’s exhales and inhales stutter and fade, as red starts to drip and stain Jesper’s threadbare carpets beyond redemption.

It’s so red. The blood is so similar Wylan’s hair, except Wylan’s hair is the type of thick blood-orange, tinting on the color of tangerines when it catches whatever sunlight reaches the depths of the Barrel’s streets. Blood is the type of deep color that looks like life at first and fades to death as time goes on.

Jesper watches as Wylan’s lifeblood darkens his carpets. _That’ll be a pain in the ass to clean_ , he notes absently.

Nobody knows the exact moment Wylan- ( _Wylan dies_ , some sadistic part of his brain sneers. _Dies. Dead. Gone forever_.) Wylan passes away.

(Or maybe they do and no one tells Jesper about it.)

(Jesper can’t decide if it’s a mercy or regret that they don’t.)

Kaz doesn’t appear. At all.

 _Maybe_ , Jesper thinks dimly in some part of his brain that hasn’t gone into complete shutdown, _it’s Kaz’s turn to do something unforgivable._

Maybe Jesper was a coward to think that he can’t blame Kaz for not showing.

(Van Eck would be happy.)

( _Bastard_.)

* * *

There isn’t a funeral.

Jesper is simultaneously glad and angered. Wylan deserved to have his life painted in rosy sunrises, dozens weeping at his death, more affected by his loss. (Except he has nothing except a quiet death of blood loss on Jesper’s ugly carpets. (He at least deserved a fur rug, Jesper thinks. It’s a ridiculous thought.) Except Wylan has nothing except maybe five people that feel his loss like a punch to the chest, like a thieving of breath, like falling and never landing. Not even a ceremonious funeral.)

Wylan would have gotten that had he stayed in Van Eck’s household. He should have died, much earlier. Jesper learns this long after it happened, whispered quietly through tears on a cold night. Fury had surged through his veins then, and he almost wants it back because anger was so much better than the freezing emptiness he feels right now.

But Jesper can’t bring himself to regret it, because even if Wylan’s supposed funeral was decorated to the point of pompousness and a crowd of paid mourners weep over his casket, not one would _feel_ his loss. Not like Jesper does.

But realistically, Wylan was a criminal. Even if some part of Jesper protests at the thought, because Wylan was the least criminal-like person he knew. And criminals didn’t get funerals- they got carried away by the Reaper’s Barge, the same courtesy extended to everyone in Ketterdam.

Wylan’s death was a quiet thing, not broadcasted. None of the six ( _five now, five_ ) spoke of it. It took weeks before his absence was even noticed by the rest of the gang, and another week for the rumors to start fluttering.

Inej takes Wylan (Wylan’s corpse) away one day after.

She looks at Jesper in pity and heartbreaking sympathy, his sleepless form still hunched over Wylan’s frail body.

“He’s not going to Reaper’s Barge.” Jesper looks up. His voice is hopelessly hoarse, but he speaks those words like a conviction.

Inej’s eyes harden. “Of course not.”

Letting Inej leave with Wylan is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Jesper admires Inej for it. Her strength was unmeasurable compared to his. Jesper could have never taken Wylan himself, deposited him in some grave somewhere and _left_.

(He could have never left Wylan.)

(Wylan left him.)

* * *

They never finish the con. Or rather, Kaz never tells them to. Kaz hasn’t been seen in days, but three members of the Dregs were _mysteriously_ exiled. Jesper takes comfort in that, despite himself. Kaz wasn’t warm chicken soup, he was a sharp disinfectant that stung the wound before it healed.

Jesper doesn’t seek Kaz out. That was Inej’s job.

Jesper seeks out gambling dens, the restless crawling of his blood the extent of the emotions he felt these days. He felt endlessly hungry, itching, for _something_.

(The softness of ruddy curls against his fingers, the quirk of a smile, the smattering of freckles like stars-)

He felt like before he started using his Grisha powers again ( _and that was because of Wylan too_ ), every part of him was empty until flushed with adrenaline. So he searched for that adrenaline. He sunk his money into bets and games and liquor, he got into shoot-outs more often than not.

He didn’t feel better. He was supposed to feel better.

* * *

Nina and Matthias left for long periods of time, doing god-knows-what. Inej went back to her crew and her ship, her temporary leave having ran dry. Kaz was up there in his office, plotting or doing whatever Kaz did in his spare time.

Jesper… Jesper stayed in limbo. Grieving, maybe.

Wylan’s death, for all that he tried not to think about it, dogged his footsteps. The thought popped up constantly, every day, all day.

Jesper was polishing his guns.

_Wylan was dead._

Jesper was placing a bet.

_Wylan was dead._

Jesper was walking from the gambling den to the Slat.

_Wylan was dead._

Misery was never a good look on him.

Jesper rarely spoke with others, excepting his nightly games, and those conversations were never of importance, brushed away with barely a thought. He went up the Kaz’s office.

Kaz didn’t seem surprised to see him, because Kaz never looked surprised. He looked about as put-together as always, smartly dressed, hair combed neatly. Jesper hated it, hated how Kaz’s 24/7 indifference was the only constant in his life.

 _“Where?”_ Jesper chokes out.

Kaz writes something down on a piece of paper and hands it over. Jesper takes it.

An address.

Jesper leaves the office without a word.

* * *

(Jesper never goes to the address, he leaves it in his shitty bedroom drawer, tucked under his clothes. He memorized the contours of the words until they become inscribed into his brain, but he never goes.

(Maybe when he doesn’t think of _Wylan’s death, Wylan’s gone_ , and feel like throwing up. Maybe then he can… He can go.)

* * *

It truly hits a month later.

Wylan’s dead.

You never exactly realize how much of _you_ is made up of someone until they’re gone. Until they’re gone, and whatever pieces of them that they left in your heart leaves with them, leaves behind endless gaping holes instead. Chasms like black holes that threaten to pull everything around them into them, until there’s nothing left but a void where your heart should be.

Everything in Jesper that was _red-orange-gold hair tiny smiles sprinkled freckles Wylan Wylan Wylan_ turns into _pale skin blood on carpet dead dead dead._

 _Exactly how much of himself has he given to Wylan? How much of Wylan has he received in return?_ Jesper wonders bleakly.

He knows the answer.

Enough that the emptiness of Wylan’s loss feels like a bullet hole in a vital organ. Enough that every breath is filled with _pain death Wylan’s gone_. Enough that he sees orange hair in every redhead and brunette, enough that even the slightest glimpse of curls causes Jesper to whirl around so violently he’s surprised he doesn’t have whiplash. Enough that Jesper feels constantly cold and emotionless and hopelessly haunted.

(In other words; too much.)

Jesper wants to go back to denial.

* * *

Jesper speedruns through the next seven stages of grief then goes back for seconds. One day he’s come to terms, the next he aches so painfully he stays in bed all day. He swings from _Wylan’s dead and that’s a fact_ to coming up with a funny joke and automatically turning around to tell it to someone who’s not there. It feels like every illness Jesper’s ever known multiplied by ten and then stabbed in the heart.

* * *

Inej comes back, three months later. For a trip, she says. She brings something wrapped in coarse fabric and takes it to the address Jesper still hasn’t been to. She visits Kaz, then Nina, then exchanges a few words with Matthias.

Inej takes Jesper up to the rooftops a few days after her return. He’s not a climber like Inej and Kaz, if anything he’s about the level of skill that everyone in the Barrel is equipped with to survive, but he makes it up easily enough.

“You’re still hurting.” She says.

Jesper’s voice is so creaky he’s surprised he hasn’t lost it altogether. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“Face it.” Inej turns to him. “You can’t keep living like this forever. Do something. Please.”

She leaves, then, before Jesper can ask if that’s a Suli proverb. Before Jesper can ask what to do.

He feels so empty.

It’s freezing on the rooftops, it’s Ketterdam winter he didn’t bring his jacket. (He hasn’t been able to touch jackets without seeing _blood blood Wylan’s blood_ smudged upon the fabric like a premonition. He uses a shawl these days, it’s not much better but Jesper takes what he can get.)

The wind blows.

It’s cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Jesper wakes up in a fit. Wylan turns beside him on the bed and curls deeper into his side. "What happened...?"
> 
> Jesper takes a deep breath and smiles, shakedly. "Nothing. Just a nightmare."
> 
> YES LET'S PRETEND THAT HAPPENED OKAY NO DEATH JUST A DREAM-
> 
> also unseen:  
> Van Eck, sneezing: I suddenly feel a random urge to start dancing in joy.


End file.
